


A Flower for Every Name: Liquid Crystal Nuzlocke

by CardParadox (aceinspades)



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Gold & Silver & Crystal | Pokemon Gold Silver Crystal Versions
Genre: Alice in Wonderland References, Gen, Gijinka, I don't know what I'm doing, LMAO, Liquid Crystal, Nuzlocke Challenge, romhack
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 18:56:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7519513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceinspades/pseuds/CardParadox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alice loved Pokémon, though she never expected to fall down a hole and end up in Johto. But this region has significant differences to the Johto she once knew and loved—new faces, another evil team and references to regions and places she's never heard of. In addition, all of the Pokémon have human forms, and the ones she catch have crazy personalities to boot. She's stuck playing a game she doesn't know, where her team members have restrictions she learns as she catches them, and the rules force her to gamble with their lives in every battle. </p><p>A Nuzlocke run with a unique rule set.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Flower for Every Name: Liquid Crystal Nuzlocke

_"Forget your compass and scars, this world will tear you apart."_  
-"The Great Affair is to Move", Forgive Durden 

I never really did like the summertime. The heat was unbearable, there was too much summer homework despite the lack of being in school, and it was all too easy to fall into a stagnant routine that simply involved sleeping, eating, and marathoning bad movies on Netflix. Or, in my case, not sleeping, forgetting to eat, and obsessively playing an old Pokémon game that came well over a decade ago.

In my defense, there really wasn't much better to do. I was too busy actively trying to distract myself from thinking about school and socializing sounded like it would take too much effort. I would've read, but I'd more or less read all the books I owned to death, and the library was too far away. I had three perfectly good gaming consoles: a Game Boy Advance, a DS, and a 3DS, none of which I'd so much as looked at for nearly a year. I used to always have a game system in my hands, but when it got to the point that school actually mattered (as in, around sophomore year), I realized that I didn't really have enough time to be glued to a video game screen. After all, I was heading off to college in the fall and the realization of, "Wow, I actually have to get myself together and grow up," that hit me a couple of months into my junior year sort of led to me paying less and less attention to those sorts of things. 

Of course, since this summer was essentially my last hurrah, I figured I deserved to goof off for a bit. And said goofing off would be accomplished through replaying my favorite Pokémon game, Crystal, simply because a last hurrah needed to be experienced through nostalgia attacks. After all, Crystal originally cemented love for the series. I watched the show all the time, and when my parents gave me a Game Boy Advanced and a used copy of Crystal, I was practically the happiest little kid on the face of the earth. What kid wouldn't be happy that they got to receive their very own starter and become a Pokémon master? No kid I would've wanted to be friends with, that's for sure. And as time wore on, I became more familiar with the strategies involved in it. I never could get into the competitive scene, simply because competitive breeding and EV training and all that jazz seemed too tedious to me. However, I _did_ learn the benefits of a well-balanced, equally-leveled team after an embarrassing playthrough of Emerald where I wiped five times in a row to Liza and Tate. I only had an over-leveled Blaziken as a viable fighter at the time, because I was one of those kids who’d power through the game with their starters and hope for the best. It didn’t work out so well.

Thus, I sat back against the willow tree in my backyard (the day was overcast for once, and I sure as heck was not going to give up the opportunity to relax in my favorite spot) with my handheld console, training up my team to beat Morty. I vaguely remembered Morty's Gengar having some sort of Psychic move, which meant that I couldn't barrel through with my newly-evolved Crobat as I hoped. I sort of regretted not picking up a Hoothoot, but I figured I could give someone Mud-Slap and hope for the best. Even if that move kind of sucked.

That was the _only_ good thing about Generation II not having abilities; some battles were significantly easier.

Despite the clouds obscuring the sun, its heat still hung in the air. It wasn't quite hot enough to be uncomfortable, but the warmth managed to make me drowsy. It was just about the only thing that _could_ make me drowsy, since I usually had an awful time falling asleep. That was another thing about summer; nothing could tire you out quite like warm weather. I could always retreat back to my comfy room, but taking a quick nap outside wouldn't hurt. I used to do it all the time, anyway, despite Mom always telling me things like, "Oh, Alice! You're going to ruin your clothes if you always lay down in the dirt like that!" But hey, Mom's job kept her out until late evening, and it was still early afternoon. I could wake up before she got back, for sure. I took off my oversized sweatshirt (which probably wasn't the smartest thing to be wearing, in hindsight) and bunched it up so that it would work as a passable substitute for a pillow. After saving my progress in my game and shutting the system off, I lied down on the grass in front of the tree and closed my eyes. Just for a little bit.

\---

I jolted awake, sitting up quickly enough for my Game Boy Advance to tumble off my chest and onto the grass. I was having the nicest dream about... Something or another. I couldn't remember anything about it for the life of me, though. What time was it, anyway? I looked up, and sure enough clouds still covered the sky. They were noticeably darker than they were when I fell asleep though, so a lot of time probably passed... Shit, was Mom almost home? I picked up my GBA and stood so I could go inside to check the clock, but something made me pause.

...Where did that hole in the base of the tree come from? 

I walked over and kneeled down in front of it. It wasn't deep—maybe deep enough for a person to crawl through, though it seemed like a bit of a tight fit—but looked like it continued under the tree. Sort of like a burrow. 

Oh, ha ha. I was probably still dreaming. Even if I slept for a few hours, an animal couldn't possibly have made a tunnel that big in such a small amount of time. But since this had to be a dream, according to every law of logic that my mind conjured up, of course I needed to check out the hole. Who knew, maybe it led to a world that could make any acid trip feel inferior. Or maybe a rabid animal would bite me and I'd be forced to live out the rest of my life in a hospital. But hey, dream logic was the best logic. So why not? I crawled into the burrow (shit, my thought of the hole being a tight fit was right; this was seriously uncomfortable) and tried to see the path ahead of me. Unfortunately, my body blocked most of the light that would've been capable of seeping in, so I was sort of stuck awkwardly feeling around in front of me. 

The tunnel seemed to be sloping downwards, best that I could tell, and I kept crawling. This was stupid and dangerous. But dream logic, right? It wouldn't have been the first time I "woke up" to find myself dreaming, anyway. Happened to everyone. So with that in mind, I reached out in front of me to see if any sudden dips or anything lay ahead. Instead, my hand touched something solid and wooden—a tree root. I felt a bit of space open to my right, though, so I tried my best to turn in that direction. I hoped that I didn't manage to get myself stuck or something, but it wasn't like I travelled too far. I'd crawl a few more inches forward, see nothing of interest, and backtrack. Piece of—

The ground shook a bit beneath me. Oh son of a bitch, please tell me that an earthquake was not going to happen while I was _under a fucking tree_. Apparently “dream logic" had actually been "nightmare logic" all along, the sly bastard. The ground shook one more time, then completely crumbled under my arms and—before I could stop myself—the momentum pulled me forward and I fell head-first into a hole. 

I tried screaming, but the air caught in my throat as it felt like my bad luck literally hurled me through the absolute worst freaking roller coaster drop in history. Or I guess it felt more like one of those tower rides at certain amusement parks, where you were strapped in and brought up to an insane height before being vertically dropped. Actually, thinking about it in the context of an amusement park ride made this feel more bearable. You always woke up before you hit the ground in a falling dream anyway, so I just needed to relax and enjoy the sensation of falling. As I tried to look around, I noticed two things: one, the ride down somehow slowed a bit (maybe I reached terminal velocity? But usually you didn't slow down when that happened, you just stopped accelerating) and two, light somehow managed to filter into the hole. It looked more or less like an ordinary hole, I guessed, though I couldn't say I had much experience with what seemingly-bottomless pits looked like.

How long had I been falling, anyway? This hole seemed to be pretty deep, although breathing didn't get any harder the deeper I fell (when did I regain the ability to breathe, for that matter?) and my descent seemed to be occurring at an almost leisurely pace. Well, not "leisurely"; fast enough that part of my mind still screamed, "Alice, you're falling right now and you're going to _die_ when you hit the ground, why aren't you panicking more about this you idiot?" but also slow enough that the force of air resistance didn't knock the air out of my lungs like it did when I first started falling. But then again, who was I to question dream physics? I closed my eyes and decided to savor the sensation of falling. After that initial shock, it was almost pleasant. Though of course nothing good ever lasted. Everything faded around me, and the last coherent thought to pass through my mind was, "I guess maybe I was more breathless than I thought."

\---

As I came to, the first thing I really noticed was that ungodly fluffiness engulfed me while I was unconscious. Like some sort of pillow beast ate me when I fell, and now instead of a hellish slow death of being dissolved by stomach acid, warm clouds met me instead. Holy hell, I never wanted to move again. Things this comfy needed to be made illegal, otherwise no one would ever get up for work again. I didn't want to open my eyes. However, the second thing I noticed happened to be the fact that I fell asleep on the grass outside, and while grass certainly had the potential to be comfortable, mere grass couldn't achieve this level of comfort. Which meant I was no longer outside. With a groan, I opened my eyes and looked around.

This was not my bed. This wasn't even my room. I didn't recognize wherever this place was supposed to be.  
Alright, I couldn't panic. I remembered my name. I remembered the date. The city I lived in, the state I lived in, all the embarrassing childhood memories I wished I could've forgotten. Mom always came home late evening. In the fall, I’d be off to college. I didn't have any siblings, but I did have an aunt for a close relative. So it couldn't have been amnesia; I remembered all the details that were important. I could probably write an essay in purple prose about what my house looked like. 

But I was dreaming, right? Despite how real this felt, it was only a dream. People woke up in strange places in dreams all the time. I stood up and walked over to the mirror to make sure I was still me. Messy dirty blonde hair, blue eyes, a scar under my left eye from an incident involving a pair of safety scissors and a half-melted Popsicle (interesting story, that one), and the same ratty outfit I wore when I fell asleep. Nope, nothing amiss. Well, if I was dreaming, checking out the rest of this strange house couldn’t hurt. I went downstairs, where an unfamiliar woman with brown hair waved me over. 

"Good afternoon, Alice!" she called cheerily. The familiarity of her tone stunned me for a moment, and I froze at the foot of the stairs. "You slept in pretty late, and you're not even dressed! Did you forget what day it is?"  
Just a dream. This was just a dream, and this had to be my dream mom. Or dream aunt, though that role probably went to the other woman sitting across from dream mom. After all, my actual mom would be too shocked over the fact that I’d _slept_ to greet me so cheerily. Not really trusting myself to say anything other than some sort of garbled mess, I merely nodded and tried to look sleepy. Wait a second, did she insult my clothing choice? I was already dressed, thank you! Okay, maybe now wasn't the time to be complaining about a dream person insulting me, but it still wasn’t okay.

Dream mom gestured to the stairs. "It's the day you're supposed to meet Professor Elm! He wanted to see you, remember?" ...Wait, what? "Go get dressed, then I'll get you your PokéGear back. It came back from the shop this morning." 

No way. This was officially the best dream ever. Screw my earlier worry of this being a nightmare, this was an awesome dream that masqueraded as a nightmare that masqueraded as a normal dream. I quickly mumbled a thanks before going back up the stairs. This was Johto. I was _in Johto_. If my subconscious decided to put me in the best region ever, no way I was about to complain. All the more reason to screw around before I woke up, right? I walked over to the computer to look for the obligatory Potion in the storage box (because I just needed to confirm that my brain was officially the most solid bro in the universe), though surprisingly, the lone item in the storage system was labeled "Drink Me". I shrugged and withdrew the item anyway, and a small, rose-colored vial with a tag reading "Drink Me" appeared in a little capsule placed next to the computer. Huh, so that was how the storage system worked. I took the vial and pulled out the stopper to sniff the contents. It sort of smelled like cookies, or something sweet and buttery at any rate. And hey, nothing that smelled like that could be harmful. 

Thanking whatever part of the brain that made it possible to taste things in dreams, I drank the contents of the vial. And holy damn, it tasted even better than it smelled. I sat on the bed for a couple of minutes, just to make sure that there wasn't some sort of fast-acting poison in there (because now that I took a second look at it, it was a bit suspicious, but who could be suspicious of cookies?) and was satisfied when I didn't keel over. With that little adventure out of the way, I made my way to the closet and pulled out something that looked “presentable”. I walked outside my room and, just before heading back down the staircase, I investigated the upper floor a bit. There were two other doors besides the one I came from; Pokémon mom having a bedroom confirmed. 

I felt as if I accomplished something great with that. Sure, X and Y did it first, but this was Johto, back in the good old days were there were only two rooms in the house.

After fully satisfying my curiosity, I made my way downstairs to greet dream mom and who I assumed to be was dream aunt. Dream mom handed me a PokéGear (I couldn’t believe it, I was holding an actual PokéGear) and I really hoped that I'd be able to just leave with that. But even in a dream...

"Here you go! Do you need me to explain how to use the phone function?" she asked. I shook my head and tried to explain that using a phone was pretty simple, but she waved me off and proceeded to explain it to me anyway. I really didn't know why I was surprised that I wouldn't be able to skip the "obligatory explanations". And here was where my attention to detail came back to bite me in the ass. 

After an unnecessarily long explanation, she told me to hurry along to Elm's lab, which was on the other side of town. Resisting the urge to say that I would've gotten there quicker without the explanation, I left the house to explore the town. And holy damn, did it look bigger from this vantage point. I had to use an actual crosswalk to get to Elm's at one point. It still seemed to be a fairly small town (the walk took maybe five minutes tops), but still. The thought of New Bark Town being an actual _town_ of all things was mind-blowing. Still the greatest dream ever, I just couldn't get over it. And of course, since this was Gen II, the moment I got to Elm's lab I looked around the side to see if the Rival (Silver, Douche, Asshat, or whatever else you fancied) stood in the same spot he did in the games. And he did; he appeared to be looking inside through a window.  
Of course, if you tried to approach him, he kicked you. So I just calmly backed away from the side of the building and walked inside. If my dream was as detail-oriented as the previous experience showed, then there was a good chance that I'd be able to get a starter Pokémon. And, dream or not, it would be awesome to look at an actual Pokémon. Well, a dream Pokémon. Dreammon. 

Alright, I really needed to shut up and go in the lab. That sounded like the name of a really bad Digimon ripoff. 

Once inside, I noticed Elm's aide hastily typing something up on a computer at a desk near the front. He looked up very briefly when I walked in, but went back to work after saying something about the Professor being in the back. He didn't need to, since the professor himself ran into sight almost exactly after I closed the door behind me. 

He grinned excitedly and gestured for me to follow him. "Good to see you, Alice! So you know why you're here, right?" The professor sounded... energetic. Before I could answer him though, he continued speaking. "I need to write a paper about how a tight bond between a Pokémon and his or her trainer can help speed up the evolution process. And since I can't really leave my lab due to all the work I have to do, I'm just going to dump a Pokémon on you and hope for the best!" 

That was certainly blunt. I gave him a questioning look, but he just kept up that dorky grin and gestured to the table on the other side of the room. "You can pick from the three Pokémon over there. They're the standard Johto starters, but I should probably war—" A 'ding' sound cut him off, and the professor walked over to one of his computers. "Oh, this is important! Err, just pick one, Alice." 

He didn't have to tell me twice. I eagerly walked over to the table he pointed to, where three Pokéballs sat. Each was marked with a sticker of the type contained inside; the one on the far left had a little flame sticker, the middle a bubble sticker, and the far right a leaf sticker. Alright, this was a dream, so I probably wouldn't be with whatever Pokémon I picked for much longer. And I'd always liked the Chikorita line. I usually used Cyndaquil, but I always wanted to try the adorable Grass starter. Why not? 

I picked up the Pokéball, which emitted a beam of white light. The familiar sight of the small, cute green Pokémon appeared before me and it let out a weird sound before a bright white light enveloped it.

What was that, evolution? No, it couldn’t have been, these Pokémon were supposed to be level five. But the glowing figure _did_ grow significantly larger. Only, as it wore off, the figure appeared to be too humanoid to be a Bayleef.

A girl stood in front of me. Her green hair, red eyes, and the leaf sticking out of the top of her head certainly tipped me off to the fact that she wasn't as human as she appeared. But what was with the white waistcoat she wore, and—was that a white bunny-eared headband she was wearing!? More importantly, there was a sword strapped to her back, along with a small shield. She looked ten at the very oldest, what was with the weapons?

The girl suddenly launched herself at me in a hug, tightly wrapping her arms around my waist. "A trainer! Are you Alice? You have to be, because you picked up my Pokéball!" She started babbling about how long she'd been waiting, and that it was really impolite to be so tardy, and that there was a lot to be done still. All I could do was stare blankly. 

What _was_ this.

**Author's Note:**

> Hoo boy. I've been meaning to upload a story for a Nuzlocke run for a while, only I was planning on that run being Volt White. But my plans for that story are kind of ambitious, and I'm really rusty as far as writing skills are concerned. So I figured I'd start out with a much less idea. Sorry it's so short, but this felt like a good place to stop. 
> 
> Every chapter will have a chapter track at the beginning, along with a small quote I feel goes with the idea of the passage. The chapter tracks will cover a pretty big range of genres, and I'm always open to suggestions. Music is powerful, and it's great to spread the love.
> 
> So, what game is this? Not vanilla Crystal, but a hack of FireRed: Liquid Crystal, by linkandzelda and Synyster Zeikku. There are a lot of changes in this hack, with new plotlines, characters and areas added in. I don't know much about the hack other than that, and I'm hoping to go into this as blind as possible. 
> 
> The link to the Alice in Wonderland rule set can be found here: http://cardparadox.tumblr.com/post/147590646372/aiwlocke-rules


End file.
